my first book review – purge

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Week 6, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

Here I write my very first book review. I want to learn to do this.
Book: Purge
Author:  Sofi Oksanen
Type of book:  Novel  (mix of crime and historical fiction)
Theme: Personal events on the life of two women at different periods of time
Thesis:  The interpretations of events on each ones’ life knitted with the personal aim and the influences of the society each one lives in.

The novel develops on the story of two characters: Zara and Aliide. Both stories are individual, but they  are also interlinked when one sees the big picture of both stories.  Zara’s story is based on the present  (around 1990s), she is a russian woman descendent of Estonian. Aliide’s story is based on the past, she is a estonian woman from the time of the second war.

The historical moment plays a role in each of the main character’s story. Each character has the pressure of the economical, social, historical and human challenges of her time, in addition to her personal limitations. Furthermore the psychology of the characters, showing their feelings of hope, shame, betrayal, guilt, denial are strongly describe along the novel, in concordance with their historical moment.

Very well writing, and the author (Sofi Oksanen)  lets us travel along different layers of time to follow the stories of both main characters. Invite us to think and to wonder about the characters and their time. It is mandatory to read all the book, any page can expose fundamental details to understand future or past sections.  Therefore, the book requires concentration.

I message between lines, that I have interpreted from the novel is: No all what you see is what it is, and there are a lot of stories behind each moment we live….. and most of those stories are unknown for us.  Additionally, all of us, in any period of time, have fears and we wish to be loved and accepted.

Purge - British Cover

Purge - British Cover

it matters what you discover

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Week 6, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

Preparing a lecture is actually challenging.  For me, the defiance is also personal because I enjoy to learn and I often dislike to be sitting in a lecture room.

On Monday night, a friend of mine,  Alia,  post a link to Noam Chomsky interview:  The purpose of Education.  Often I discover something when I listening to Chomsky, and this talk is not an exception. One of the multiple things that call my attention in this talk is: the idea of education that promotes enlightenment. My own path as a learner has been a bumping process of searching, exploring, trying and reflecting.  I am also in congruence that the technology is neutral.  Oh well, better listen to the talk.

From the last comments Chomsky mention an anecdote that help me to harmonize myself on how to prepare the courses: “what it matters is what YOU discover”

organizing posts

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Week 5, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

After deciding to stick to this blog, one thing I want to achieve is to organize its posts. When I started boggling I was clueless of my own posts: how would they look like?, about what would I write?, which one will be my style?, etc. Consequently, the idea to organize posts was not even contemplated.

To my surprise but sometimes I require to find something I have posted and to find it is tricky. I am bad with keywords, writing titles, well I am not good on writing in general (as I have complain so much).  Nevertheless, it will be useful to find a way to organize myself, and keep on using the technologies we profess are “good for learning”.  So, for some time I have been thinking how to organize the blog, I did sketches, lists, but I haven’t implement a thing. However, as this spring I will be given some lectures and I want to use my blog as part of my memoir of this learning process then I need to organize my blog now.

In this weekend I put hand on organizing my blog. These are the steps I followed:

  1. I found a good link explaining the difference between category and tags.
  2. As I had been thinking in keywords for a long time now, so after the previous step I  wrote a table with the keywords I though will be relevant.
  3. I went through my existent 167 posts and label them according to the table.
  4. While labeling I discover some keywords I should use which were no there, and others which I do not want to use in the future.

The process, besides to take time and energy, was actually productive in diverse ways:

  • I research myself.
  • I discover many blogs are only of bla, bla, bla, bla (~babbling). Seeking for comfort, I believe. I want those to be improve somehow.
  • I saw myself over time. It is amazing to see how time passes by fast and we learn to think/walk/talk so slowly.
  • It got some kind of “framework” for future blog activity.
  • My research and my blog are extensions of me.

My blog is inspired on some mothers’ blogs. My research is kind of my abstract baby. It is clear for me that my abstract baby cannot be blog exactly the same way as mothers document the life of their offsprings. But both type of babies have a developing process, and trigger experiences that can be shared. Blogging is a way of sharing and documenting. Let’s see how it goes the 2012 wave of this blog!

The result of this work is in the following two lists: categories and tags.

PS. From now on, I do not think to review again as I did this time all the previous posts…. no time for it.

milestone: submission

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Week 5, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

Life milestones imply some kind of change. For personalities as mine, a life milestones can be experienced as paradoxical moments. Let me explain. One works intensively hard for a period of time to reach successfully the specific milestone, and then at the particular moment to face the milestone it emerges: (i) the rejoice that the process is over, (ii) simultaneously diverse emotions connecting me with the efforts of the journey hold me to the moments before the change and (iii) feelings of nervousness of the unknown future are also present. It is so incredible intense!

Milestones remind me vividly that life only moves forward. Take the time that it takes to walk the personal path towards one’s milestone. Just never give up! No Sir. Life only moves forward.

What does the milestone submission mean? It means that Erkki said my thesis is ready, he assigned my reviewers and yesterday my dissertation was delivered in the faculty to start the process towards the end of my PhD journey. Wow!

walk until reach your milestone

walk until reach your milestone *

* Translation of the photo: NO! Never give up, the good things can soon show up.

ace attorney

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Week 5, 2012
Joensuu, Finland

From my perspective, the motion picture industry has a presence in USA. For example, usually WaltDisney  or Hollywood produce a movie and later launch a game related to the specific movie.

Japan creates games, which are fantastic without a need to produce a film. One of those games is Ace Attorney. I should confess that this particular game has influenced me in the game designs I have been involved.

Now, for me, an interesting fact was to discover that Japan is producing a movie of this game, ace attorney. Hmmm….  Wondering about watching a film from my game, with live action, with actors, instead of anime or a manga. Interesting…..

Some years ago, when I was newer in the world of research and posting,  I posted about west-east trends as in this link in January 2008 and  this link in May 2008. But I never suspect the trends to go in this direction. I enjoy to be surprised!

For sure I want to watch the movie!